Title: You call it a message, but I make it music - Jocelyn Pook, principal
composer on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, talks about Portraits in Absentia,
a piece built around vioces on her answerphone

Interview by: Jennifer Rodger

I started collecting my answerphone messages last year. It was provoked by
my interest in the presence of music in everyday sound, and particularly in
voices - nearly everyone sings when they say hello and goodbye.

This particular musical score came to mind after a machine message from my
friend Margaret, who has a sing-song voice, and I thought, ďThat can be a musical
score.Ē So I developed a musical piece using these messages. I have often done
work that brings out the singing quality in the spoken word.

In my other work, I use some incredible samples, and people are often surprised
by how bad in quality they are. They are usually recorded by me, collected when
I am walking around, for example. I do end up incorporating stuff that is bad
quality yet are interesting samples. But when recording I use the best equipment
I can get. For instance, when I was working on the film score for Kubrickís
Eyes Wide Shut, I was lucky enough to record at Abbey Road, and was completely
blown away by the quality of the sound. The end result was so exciting. Iíve
been really spoilt now. But each sound has its own story and own quality.

The thing about the answer phone is that it has become so much a part of most
peopleís lives; it can feel like youíve been cheated if there are no messages,
and we come to expect a daily litany of messages and voices. And from the messages
left on the machine can emerge a feeling of absence - of people not connecting
with other people, missing each other and not being together.

The sound quality of an answering machine is also haunting. But itís mostly
the ritual of the message leaving. How often will people ask if you are there?
It has a resonance of asking for other things - like ďGod, are you there?Ē

A lot of varied ideas and emotions have emerged from these messages, although
initially I didnít have a clue what to do with them. I work with a Persian singer
and she has a habit of singing into my machine before she speaks and I also
have a friend called Trevor, who is travelling around the world, ringing me
up from all over and describing places. These different messages put together
made an exotic world. This is then at odds with another message from a friend
who talks about getting me a cat flap.

In Portraits in Absentia, there are little narratives that emerge which are
kind of the drama of the everyday life, a celebration of moments and friendships.
Or rather, the extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Itís quite nice to use something such as an answering machine as a recording
instrument because it imposes a direction on you as a composer. With this composition,
I had imagined it would become a requiem, yet the piece is quite chirpy, and
has been described as a pop song. Itís very low tech, and I am interested in
how it will work live; the sound quality is low but itís a part of its greatness.
I am drawn to the scratchy, hissy quality. Itís evocative.